The corona pandemic has a strong impact on social structures and processes, not least on public narration. An epochal crisis like the current pandemic challenges conventional narratives and requires new or modified narratives more appropriate for addressing novel issues.
The PhD project focuses on the corona pandemic as a turning point for public narratives about the Baltic Sea Region. Based on a corpus of German newspaper articles covering the pandemic, it aims to investigate how the public perception of Sweden and the federal state Mecklenburg-Vorpommern has changed under the influence of the current crisis. The study examines journalistic texts as powerful units of discourse when it comes to shaping and establishing new narratives. The project combines methods of narratology with discourse and corpus linguistic approaches. Thus, it seeks to contribute to pandemic research in the field of narratology and discourse analysis.
Publications from the project
- “‘The Invention of a Pandemic.’ Conspiracy Argumentation in the German Alternative Newspaper Demokratischer Widerstand,” in Populism and Conspiracy Theory: Case Studies and Theoretical Perspectives, ed. Michael Butter, Katerina Hatzikidi, Constanze Jeitler, Giacomo Loperfido, and Lili Turza. Abingdon: Routledge, 2024, 154-180, DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003474272-9.
- “‘Nehmt euren Virus und haut ab in die Stadt, wo ihr herkommt!’ Literarische Stadt-Land-Narrative der Coronapandemie,” in Im Zeichen des Unverfügbaren. Literarische Selbst- und Fremdbilder im 20. und 21. Jahrhundert, ed. Yvonne Dudzik, Arne Klawitter, Martin Fietze and Hiroshi Yamamoto. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2022, 279-302, DOI: 10.14361/9783839463376-014.